Opinion: Tuesday&rsquo;s Senate primaries put Republicans in a good position for the midterms

by Boris Epshteyn, Chief Political Analyst

(Sinclair Broadcast Group)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Boris Epshteyn formerly served as a Senior Advisor to the Trump Campaign and served in the White House as Special Assistant to The President and Assistant Communications Director for Surrogate Operations.

The most watched race was the West Virginia Republican primary for the U.S. Senate. State Attorney General Patrick Morrissey won the contest with controversial candidate Don Blankenship coming in third.

With Blankenship out of the picture, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) appears to be very vulnerable. He received about 10 points less in Tuesday’s Democrat primary than he did in the primary for his seat in 2012.

In Indiana, Republican businessman Mike Braun won the primary and will take on the current Democrat Sen. Joe Donnelly.

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are heading to Indiana on Thursday to back Braun. That is a sign of things to come in terms of active support from the White House for Mike Braun.

In Ohio, Republican Congressman Jim Renacci will now take on current Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown in November. Brown has moved hard to the left in his time in the Senate and is now widely seen as more progressive than his state of Ohio, which Trump won by over 8 percent in 2016.

Overall, Republicans will now strongly target these three Senate elections in November, along with others, in states such as Missouri and Florida. On the flip side, Democrats will work hard to win Republican-held seats in Arizona and Nevada.

Here is the bottom line: Tuesday night was a good night for the Republican Party. Republicans didn’t hurt themselves with any of the candidates who won the primaries. Instead, the GOP positioned themselves to widen the very slim, 51-49, majority the party currently holds in the Senate.